city butterflies

Nagoya, Japan 2011

Photographs by Eiji Watanabe

As part of a collaboration with the Japanese artist

Eiji Watanabe, last year I installed a series of butterfly

names in a former kimono shop in downtown Nagoya.

The shop was recently occupied by a local politician

as a base to launch his (successful) mayoral election

campaign. The butterflies still hovered, in a more

politically charged space.

The Mountains Of Holland

The Alps, the Andes, the Himalayas, the Cairngorms, what

are these compared with the mountains of Holland, whose

height and range can never be measured ? Wrapped in their

own weather, invisible to the eye, they constantly recede

before the traveller who begins to imagine they are only

a rumour. Yet in the small hours, or in the evening, one who

walks pensively in a solemn extent of water-meadows may

sometimes feel the implication of their weight.

A boxed edition containing a flag, enamel plaque and dvd is

published by De Vlaggen Club/The Flag Club and available

from Peter Foolen Editions

peterfoolen@online.nl

on the earth

With thanks to Lesley Punton, Jim Hamlyn

and Angus

Reticence

The wooden columns of the Byre Theatre, St Andrews,

are like tree trunks holding the grove of the interior

space.

Three years ago, I installed a series of four-word poems

on the four sections of each column. Since then, all

the poems have been removed but for one column

which still bears the single word - 'reticence'.

Dusk print

New Stobhill Hospital, Glasgow.

a rudimentary song

Brief descriptions of bird songs in vinyl lettering

attached to a window looking onto a courtyard

planted with birch trees and benches.

New Stobhill Hospital, Glasgow.

Eight Delays

Eight poems on plaques attached to eight benches

in a courtyard. New Stobhill Hospital, Glasgow.

after the shower

it goes on raining

gently on the pond

under the willow